Sacrifice

It some level, it boils down this. What am I willing to sacrifice in the name or principle and humanity for people I don't know even if "they look like me"? Higher gas prices, while salient and an irritant, is a sacrifice I'm both fortunate enough to be able to afford and willing to make.  But would I be willing to live in a post-nuclear holocaust world? That's much tougher. If continued escalation in Ukraine leads to a nuclear exchange, we might be on course for a strategic strike against the US. 

Cities would be laid waste. People who survived the blast would be dying of radiation sickness. Food would be short and people would starve. There would likely be no electricity and hence for for us no water.  With scarcity might come violence and a breakdown of law and order. My life expectancy might come down from a couple of decades to a couple of years or months depending.  Given that, I'm very reluctant to side with the hawks that escalation is the only way to stop Putin. Ant that's precisely what Putin's counting on. So while I feel terrible for the people of Ukraine, I'm not yet ready to make the kind of sacrifice that would come with a nuclear war.